Can you solve a wicked problem affecting thousands of people living in slums while sipping coffee in an air-conditioned room? In our 45 years of experience in Bangladesh and across eleven countries in Asia and Africa, the answer is mostly no. The ideas that work come from a little closer to the problem. Solutions that read more

The market for microinsurance in Bangladesh has been growing rapidly over the last 10 years, with over 25 million subscribers. Yet it is still met with skepticism among many poor microfinance clients. As of this January, BRAC, in partnership with Guardian Life Insurance Company, joined the market making its credit shield insurance product available nationwide read more

Dear fathers, You may have read the news today. A teenager was harassed on her way back from school. A housewife, raped and murdered. Just the other day, you read about the rape of an eight-month-old baby. Do these stories bother you? Or did you fold up the newspaper and sigh in relief thinking, “At read more

80 per cent of all vision impairment can be cured or prevented. Often it just takes the simplest solution– a single pair of eye glasses. It is estimated that 624 million people around the world could have their vision restored if they could access eye glasses. This lack of access is costing the global read more

This year BRAC in Bangladesh became the largest microfinance institution, in terms of number of clients, to be Smart Certified, signifying to our country market and to the industry writ large that we treat our clients with adequate care. As a non-profit dedicated to poverty reduction, client welfare has been central to BRAC’s mission since read more

Last year WHO and UNICEF’s Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation reported that Bangladesh had made significant progress in reducing the proportion of people practising open defecation –to just 1 per cent, down from 34 per cent in 1990. The report also lauded Bangladesh for being the only country in South Asia which read more

Originally appeared on Devex. Most people have probably never heard of the world’s largest non-governmental organisation. BRAC, with a workforce of over 100,000 people and projects reaching 1 in every 55 people, is the biggest development organisation operating today. But compared with groups such as Amnesty International, Oxfam, Red Cross, UNICEF and World Vision, BRAC is hardly read more

Originally appeared on NextBillion. The integration of mobile money into microfinance operations is one of the most exciting yet challenging prospects facing microfinance providers today. Mobile money presents a fast, cost-efficient and flexible alternative delivery channel through which money can be transferred, loans can be repaid and savings can be deposited. Yet, globally, active usage read more

You’d be forgiven for thinking microfinance has gone wildly out of fashion. The “development caravan”—defined as the wagon train of poverty interventions that excite donors—has pulled away from micro-lending, drawn to more powerful things like BRAC-style graduation programmes (which aim to “graduate” people from extreme poverty into a sustainable livelihood) and bKash-like mobile money, according read more

Today is International Day of the Girl Child, and the karate girls of Korail in Bangladesh are screaming – as they are most days. Standing tall, and bellowing from the bottom of their lungs as they kick and punch, the girls are decked out in their dark blue gi (the traditional uniform used for karate read more